Susan Rice will stay in key position
National security adviser Susan Rice said Friday she has no plans to depart the Obama administration after Tuesday’s blowout in the midterm elections.
“I serve at the pleasure of the president, and I will continue to serve as long as he’d like me to,” Rice told reporters at the White House.
{mosads}Speculation has focused on the president’s national security staff as an area that could see significant turnover following the midterms, with staffers taxed in recent months by operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, the Ebola outbreak in Africa and Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.
Earlier Friday, The Washington Post reported that Rice’s deputy, Antony Blinken, was likely headed to the State Department to replace William Burns as deputy secretary.
According to the Post, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Sandy Winnefeld and former Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns are under consideration to fill the position. Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell has reportedly turned down the job.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest confirmed that Blinken was “being considered for some other opportunities inside the administration,” but declined to comment on the search for his replacement.
“Obviously the president and everybody that I work with here at the White House has the highest regard for Mr. Blinken,” Earnest said.
The White House has said there would not be a significant staff shake-up in response to the midterm elections.
“The president is somebody who doesn’t make personnel changes just for cosmetic reasons,” press secretary Josh Earnest said. “And maybe that would generate a day or two of positive headlines if the president were to satisfy the need to publicly fire a couple of people, but that’s not the way the president operates. The way the president operates is he’s going to take a look at his team, and I think he’s going to try to draw some conclusions about who he needs around him to advise him.”
At the same time, Earnest said he was “confident that there will be some of my colleagues who will, as previous White House staffers have done, make a decision after a big election to decide that it’s time to move on.”
This story was updated at 1:30 p.m.
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